Partial Inventories
by Lupin
Summary: In the early days of the team's formation, the Weiss members take stock. Literally or otherwise.


_Author's Note: This fic is based on the Weiss Kreuz drama CD Wish a Dream Collection 4 First Mission and not the manga's version of events. In the First Mission drama CD, Weiss is convened and formed on the same day, Aya gives himself his new name, and Ken doesn't beat anyone up, though he _is_ rather grumpy. The titular first mission takes place on Christmas Eve; the mission details aren't laid out here, because they're all in the drama CD and because the point of this fic isn't the mission, anyway._

**Partial Inventories**

I.

Weiss starts out with a flowershop, four apartments above, and far too many varieties of flowers. In the face of his team-mates' reluctance Omi notes that at least the shop is stocked and Momoe-san is there to help them out, to which Youji mutters something about marigolds and Kritiker's bad sense of humour. Assassination is something that they've been trained for, he adds, which is more than can be said for their day job.

To which Omi replies, too cheerfully, "Then we'll just have to learn on the job, won't we?"

They receive their first mission on the evening that they meet. The deadline is flexible but the work, of both sorts, begins immediately. At Omi's insistence they close the shop the next day and take inventory instead, which in practice means that Omi takes inventory and the others do what he tells them to. Ken drags things from storage closets into the shop and sometimes back again, grumbling about Aya, who is conveniently absent, and Youji, who only saunters into the shop at ten past noon.

"It's about time," Ken snaps, shoving a stack of wicker baskets into Youji's arms. "Here, six ...basket-things, I don't know what the kid wants to call them, and there's another stack of them in the back that you might as well go and fetch."

Youji blinks as Ken shuffles past him into the back room, shoulders hunched in determined resentment. "Good morning to you too."

"It's afternoon, Youji-kun."

At the flowershop table sits Omi, the detritus of florist life littering the floor around his feet: reels of ribbon, a lonely coil of floral netting, several chunks of floral foam. Youji notices a bewildering array of shears and cutters on the table, and then -- belatedly and with some surprise -- the unforced enthusiasm in Omi's voice.

"Good afternoon, then. What's up with Ken, you've been treating him like a slave or something?" He sets the baskets down on a corner of the table and peers over Omi's shoulder. Neat, careful characters march down the pages of an open notebook.

"Mm? Ken?" Omi picks up one of the tools, frowns at it for a while, then makes another note: _Stem cutter, green handles, one_. "Well, he _has_ been helping me single-handedly all morning." He looks up for the first time, giving Youji a smile somewhere between self-conscious embarrassment and gentle rebuke.

"Okay, okay, I can take a hint. I've got these six, and I quote, 'basket-things'. You want me to get the rest of them?"

"Don't bother," Ken says loudly, returning from the back room with another armful of baskets. He drops them to the floor, where they land with a sad rustle next to a broken flowerpot. "Any idea when Aya's showing up?"

Aya shows up an hour or so after lunch. After Ken's predictable, half-hearted and easily-curtailed attempt at violence, the rest of the afternoon passes in a blur of obscure floral implements and dusty cardboard boxes, until Omi declares a break for dinner. Several pages of his record book are already filled.

"I'd hoped that we could finish this today, but I guess it's not working out... I guess we can do the rest in bits and pieces, over the next week or so? We'd better open the shop tomorrow and get used to things. That's fine, right?"

Youji shrugs, privately amused. Aya makes a vague noise of assent. Ken is already out of the door. They have dinner separately, and in the evening silence that follows Omi wanders around the shop alone, peering through glass cases and reciting the names of flowers to himself.

His efforts are insufficient. They open the flowershop the next day to find that December is not the best time for amateur florists, particularly those with a second occupation; the shop is swamped with orders for Christmas arrangements and custom bouquets, and looking up the names of foreign blooms is not much easier than researching their first mission. Three days in, Omi remains the only one who faces the list of names and corresponding prices with any sort of enthusiasm.

He points out this to the others. Youji ruffles Omi's hair because he has already learnt that it annoys him, and says, "That's because you're still in school, kid. It comes to you easily."

Omi bats his hand away with a sigh. "That's not an excuse! I've even made lists for all of you. Don't scowl like that, Ken-kun -- it's part of our job."

"See, I'm not sure how knowing that gentians mean--" Ken glances down at the page in his hand "--'justice' or 'sincerity' is going to help me take out the targets, you know?"

"It's part of our cover."

"Yeah, well, no reason for us to be the best-educated florists in Tokyo."

"You don't have to learn the flower meanings if you don't want to," Aya says, not looking up from his own list.

Ken stares at Aya for a few seconds. Then he turns triumphantly to Omi, waving the crumpled paper like a war trophy. "See? Even Mr Strictly-Business Aya thinks that this is overkill--"

"But at least get the names and prices down," Aya adds. "This _is_ part of our job."

The other parts of their job are less pedestrian. Over their first week, when not contending with the business of running a flowershop, they plan the mission. Omi makes the breakthrough and the pieces of the mission come together within days, date and time and place -- Youji wonders to himself if Omi keeps a mission schedule in the same way that he keeps the shop roster, or the slowly-growing inventory. The requirements of a school schedule leave Omi stuck with afternoon duty, and the few days before the end of term give Youji time enough to make his own observations. In the slower hours Omi takes out his schoolbooks, fills pages of thin notebook paper with collections of facts or theorems in a clear, thoughtful hand.

The only things that Youji collects are names and faces, and he misplaces those easily. He makes his own additions to the inventory, when he remembers, though Omi deplores his handwriting. But it feels reassuring to work on it, the long list laid out with logical neatness: object, description, quantity, as though everything can be detailed and understood. It can't, of course. The format doesn't translate -- _wicker baskets, dark brown, fifteen; flowerpots, blue-and-white, six; nights, empty, too many to count_ -- and Youji knows this without trying.

-------------------

II.

Within two weeks of the team's formation, the mission night comes and goes. Ken spends the early hours of Christmas morning cleaning the blood off his bugnuks. He supposes he should feel-- something, disgust or guilt or whatever it was that made Aya, of all people, stumble wordlessly upstairs like a wounded sleepwalker. But no; there's just the task before him, the blood on his gloves, and a faint irritation at how the leather has begun to stain.

Above the dull stink of dried blood, Ken catches the sharper smell of smoke. He turns. Youji grins in greeting from the doorway, cigarette in hand. "Blood in the shop sink, Siberian? Not very considerate."

Ken looks back down at the sink, the water already running a paler shade of red. "You're the one smoking in the shop."

"Mm." Youji walks forward, footsteps soft out of habit, and Ken knows without looking up that Youji is grinning. "Smells better than blood, though. Mind, I'm just trying to save you from the scolding you'll get tomorrow morning when Omi finds out. _You can't have blood in the flowershop, Ken-kun! You'll blow our cover!_ Besides--" and Youji reaches over to stub out his cigarette on the edge of the sink, ashes leaving a grimy smear "--I kind of like the smell of flowers."

"What?"

"Flowers. You know, what our shop is supposed to be full of." He switches the tap off.

"Hey!"

"Your gloves are clean, idiot." They are: the water escaping slowly down the drain is clear. Ken blinks and wonders when he stopped paying attention. "Better not waste water, you know Omi's probably keeping an eye on the utility bills too."

Ken rescues his sodden gloves, hangs them on the side of the sink. "You have a problem with the kid?"

"No." He sounds as if the thought had never occurred to him. "He seems like a good kid. Takes everything too seriously, mind. Believing in Persia, swallowing the whole 'white hunters' nonsense..."

Water begins to drip slowly from Ken's gloves, filling the silence before it can become awkward. Youji goes over to the table and leafs through the inventory book. To put it mildly, conversations have not been an integral part of life in Weiss, and Ken takes his time deciding whether to let this one die prematurely or push it along to its inevitable end. He figures the long pause should be enough to finish it off, but no: Youji's still there, still looking through the book, and for lack of a graceful exit Ken coughs, offers: "So you worked with them too? Erica and Marigold."

"Manx and Persia now, as the kid keeps reminding me. Yeah." Youji pauses halfway through turning a page. "Such harmless names, hm? Flowers. Cats. Makes it easier to play along, I guess. Me, I find it hard to think of Kritiker as saints once you've worked for them-- the spy work isn't pretty, to start with, and when it comes to _killing_-- but hey, what do I know, right?"

"The killing bothers you?"

The question probably sounds more incredulous than Ken had intended. Youji laughs. "Feels like it should." He closes the book. "Get some sleep, you know the kid'll set us to work in the shop first thing tomorrow. And wash your gloves in your own sink next time, yeah?"

In the wave of indignation that hits, Ken forgets his surprise at the abrupt farewell. "Look, not all of us have weapons that don't make a mess--"

"It was your choice, wasn't it?"

It sounds like a simple question. Youji leaves before Ken can figure out the parameters, let alone the answer. The gloves have stopped dripping into the sink; Ken picks them up, the leather damp and cold against his fingers. Unlike Youji, he has no interest in Omi's project. He's made his own mental inventory already: one meaningless day job. One gloomy mission briefing room, with a dartboard and no one to play darts with. One calico cat, which seldom leaves its place on Momoe-san's lap, yet manages to leave fur across the tables and floor. Three supposed team-mates.

Youji's cigarette stub lies on the edge of the sink. The rest of Christmas Day lies ahead. Ken thinks about taking the day off, visiting the orphanage again, doing anything except staying in the shop and facing the crowds; wrestling with the flowers and their incomprehensible foreign names, the few Japanese ones lost in tangles of transliterated katakana.

-------------------

III.

After the mission, progress with inventory is at best desultory. It takes a post-New Year's burst of enthusiasm from Omi for the project to be completed, more than three weeks after they began, and though Omi regards the completed records with satisfaction, Aya does not think it will take long for the book to end up forgotten and gathering dust in some lonely drawer.

But at least Omi's list of inanimate objects is ordered and logical, unlike the circumstances of flowershop duty. During the winter break of early January the shop is semi-permanently flooded by schoolgirls, their patronage no longer limited to the late afternoons. Aya finds their high, excited voices grating, though preferable to real conversation. Whenever his team-mates call his name -- her name -- they coarsen the sounds, an unwitting heresy. He prefers not being spoken to.

The days since Weiss's formation have fallen into a pattern of flowershop duty and hospital visits. The nights will fall into a less predictable rhythm, a binary of blood and nothingness, but he soon learns that the difference is not too great: that it is possible for emptiness and horror to average out. And then night and day, too, can be balanced. He waters the flowers. He kills a man. He makes a flower arrangement from pieces of his past. He cleans blood from his katana, or mud from the shop floor. The syllables of his codename stop jostling against each other and smooth out into a low hiss.

In the weeks that come he will try to remind himself why he stays. The list begins always with Aya-chan and does not go much further.


End file.
